The Court refused applications for suppression orders under s 18(1)(a) of the Open Courts Act 2013 (Vic), pseudonym orders, and file restriction orders under r 28.05(4) of the Supreme Court (General Civil Procedure) Rules 2025 (Vic). Finanzio J held that allegations already in the public domain cannot be treated as confidential for the purposes of r 28.05(4); that potential reputational damage and embarrassment from scandalous allegations do not constitute a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice; and that even if such a risk existed, the court's ordinary processes for ruling on admissibility and striking scandalous irrelevant material from the record constituted other reasonably available means to address it. The possibility that provisionally admitted material might later be ruled inadmissible does not justify pre-emptive suppression, nor does the prospect that published court material might attract defamation law protections.
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